>In my early days of using the internet it was much easier to make meaningful connections.

That's what I recall as well. I wonder what happened.

One story is something like: high-profile hostile interactions drive engagement, and are actually good for the bottom line of e.g. social media websites. But they also have the effect of modeling bad behavior, reducing "internet social trust" and "internet social capital". I wonder if any of the literature on social trust / social capital could be usefully applied to the entire internet considered as a community.

Another project related to this which I think could be super interesting: The big social media websites get a ton of traffic and scrutiny, but there are loads of niche online communities on other domains which have popped over the years. HN being just one example -- Mastodon is another which has been in the news a lot recently. It'd be cool if someone was to study these communities informally: create a taxonomy, make use of anthropological tools, or simply write a "travelogue" of becoming a user of a broad variety of niche online communities for just a few weeks each. I think this could be the first step to helping us find our way out of the current mess.

Right now it is too hard to compete with the big sites. Someone could shine a spotlight on small players who have something cool going on and want to grow. If nothing else, the next time there is a "crisis" like Elon buying Twitter, you can give people a list of the top 3 alternative sites they should be checking out. Never let a crisis go to waste!

> That's what I recall as well. I wonder what happened.

I think the biggest factor is a kind of 'paradox of choice' effect, where any online community feels less worthwhile just because there is such a huge variety to choose from. If I look at my Discord now, I'm part of a few dozen servers now, which all at some point seemed interesting. But that interest was fleeting, because... well, how important can they be, if there are a few dozen of them in my list, without me even looking very hard?

So I think on the one hand, it's fine to be a bit nostalgic for an old internet that simply won't exist in that way again. But on the other hand, it's probably also a matter of personal choice and a willingness to engage with the small communities that still exist, which could probably revive some of that old feeling of connectedness.

I think I was pretty lucky with this post, because I managed to capture people's attention in a place that's maybe a bit unusal for this kind of interaction, which made it more singular and 'worthwhile' again. But that can't be repeated at will, of course.

I think that there's been a lot of research about this. I can recommend the book "Change: How to Make Big Things Happen" by Damon Centola. Ironically, it goes into detail on how Twitter became successful.